"Arent These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?": Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity

Abstract

Taking seriously the global trend of selfies becoming marketable and entangled in ecologies of commerce, this article looks at Influencers who have emerged as (semi-)professional selfie-producers and for whom taking selfies is a purposively commercial, thoughtful, and subversive endeavor. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork and grounded theory analysis, I examine Influencers’ engagements with selfies on Instagram and their appropriations of selfies as salable objects, as tacit labor, and as an expression of contrived authenticity and reflexivity. Through these practices, Influencers achieve “subversive frivolity,” which I define as the under-visibilized and under-estimated generative power of an object or practice arising from its (populist) discursive framing as marginal, inconsequential, and unproductive.

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SI: Selfies
Introduction
At a conference I once attended, an academic, having briefly
heard about my research topic, bemoaned, “Aren’t these just
young, rich women doing vain things online?” I share Banet-
Weiser’s (1999) lament that scholars may “overlook” the
“complicated production and articulation” of some types of
research, such as when her work on beauty pageants was
diminutively classified by colleagues as mere “fun” (p. 4).
Banet-Weiser (1999) cautions that these are “dangerous
dismissal[s], because [they] immediately and apparently
unselfconsciously defin[e] particular cultural sites as worthy
of intellectual attention and others . . . [as] junk” (p. 4). This
made me self-conscious as a researcher and as a selfie-taker,
and I decided not to hand the academic my business card—
DIY Instagram prints my selfie on one side and my contact
details on the other (Figure 1).
But are selfies merely frivolous? Ellen DeGeneres’ infa-
mous “Twitter-breaking” Oscar selfie in 2014—retweeted
over 3.3 million times and “favorited” over 2 million times in
over 151 different countries (Maxwell, 2014)—was likely
the most high-profile commercial selfie of the year. Samsung,
the company that produces the Galaxy Phone prominently
featured as the selfie-taking device at the Oscars, reportedly
invested “an estimated SGD20 million on ads” (Vranica, 2014)
in exchange for one of its devices to get airtime. However,
the specifics of this arrangement have been hotly debated—
perhaps this ambiguity was strategic as a selfie believed to
have gone viral “organically” as opposed to being “orches-
trated” would tend to be perceived as more “authentic.”
Since then, selfie-based marketing has become so ubiqui-
tous that it has inspired “best of” ads that feature selfies
(Donald, 2014). For example, a popular Tumblr, “Your
Selfie Idea Is Not Original. It’s Shit,” run by an “anonymous
ad agency creative” (Pathak, 2014), also collects “worst of”
examples of such campaigns. In scholarly research, commer-
cial selfies have been examined by Deller and Tilton (2015)
in the form of “charitable meme” selfies and their propensity
to “mutat[e] from a (possibly naïve) notion of raising
awareness to becoming a multimillion-pound fund-raiser”
(p. 1789). Marwick (2015) has also examined luxury selfies
produced by some of the most popular Instagram users (by
number of followers), including Instagram famous high
641342SMS
XXX10.1177/2056305116641342Social Media + SocietyAbidin
research-article2016
The University of Western Australia, Australia
Corresponding Author:
Crystal Abidin, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western
Australia, M257, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Perth, Western Australia
6009, Australia.
Email: crystalabidin@gmail.com
“Aren’t These Just Young, Rich Women
Doing Vain Things Online?”: Influencer
Selfies as Subversive Frivolity
Crystal Abidin
Abstract
Taking seriously the global trend of selfies becoming marketable and entangled in ecologies of commerce, this article
looks at Influencers who have emerged as (semi-)professional selfie-producers and for whom taking selfies is a purposively
commercial, thoughtful, and subversive endeavor. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork and grounded theory analysis,
I examine Influencers’ engagements with selfies on Instagram and their appropriations of selfies as salable objects, as tacit
labor, and as an expression of contrived authenticity and reflexivity. Through these practices, Influencers achieve “subversive
frivolity,” which I define as the under-visibilized and under-estimated generative power of an object or practice arising from
its (populist) discursive framing as marginal, inconsequential, and unproductive.
Keywords
selfies, social media, Instagram, Influencer, gendered labor, Singapore

2 Social Media + Society
schoolers, personal friends of mainstream media celebrities
who receive fame by association, “luxury enthusiasts” (p.
153), aspiring actors, models, and tattoo artists. While she
notes that these luxury selfies document “what many young
people dream of having and the lifestyle they dream of liv-
ing” (Marwick, 2015, p. 155), it is unclear in her analysis
whether these Instagrammers are remunerated for their self-
ies featuring luxury products or whether these selfies were
sponsored from the start.
This article follows from the entanglement of selfies with
commerce and as a pushback to the discourse that selfies are
mere frivolous acts. As noted by Senft and Baym (2015),
“for all its usage, the term [selfies]—and more so the
practice(s)—remain fundamentally ambiguous, fraught,
and caught in a stubborn and morally loaded hype cycle”
(p. 1588). However, an in-depth engagement and under-
standing of one group of selfie-takers, namely, Influencers in
Singapore, and the ways in which they relate to their selfies
as products and practices reveal an undercurrent of subver-
sive frivolity at work. I define subversive frivolity as the
under-visibilized and under-estimated generative power of
an object or practice arising from its (populist) discursive
framing as marginal, inconsequential, and unproductive. I
contemplate how Influencers are using selfies to reap per-
sonal gains—both monetary and self-actualizing—and shape
the social media ecology in Singapore through their highly
gendered labor. Despite populist discursive framing of self-
ies as mere frivolity, this has allowed the labor in which
Influencers engage to slide under the radar, in the ways they
subvert affordances of Instagram, the expectations of female
entrepreneurs, the gaze of the camera, and representations of
authenticity.
I draw on a larger research project on social media micro-
celebrities known as Influencers in Singapore. The prior
project included participant observation conducted with 190
Influencers and related backend actors in the capacity of
various roles since mid-2010. In total, 173 interviews last-
ing between 10 min and 3 hr were conducted between
December 2012 and July 2013, in addition to digital partici-
pant observation, archival research, web archaeology, and
visual and textual analysis to cover physical and digital plat-
forms on which Influencers operate (see Abidin, 2015b).
Figure 1. Author’s own image, screengrabbed, September 2015.

Abidin 3
Fieldwork entailed continued interaction with other actors
involved in the Influencers’ social milieus, including their
peers, backend production management, sponsors and
advertisers, and followers. As such, although the data are
drawn mainly from the textual and visual content of publicly
accessed blogs and associated social media platforms
including Twitter and Instagram between December 2011
and January 2015, the analysis is influenced by long-term
ethnographic work among these Influencers. A grounded
theory approach (Glaser, 1978) was adopted in the thematic
coding of all content.
Influencers and Selfies
Since 2005 in Singapore, many young women have begun
using social media to craft “microcelebrity personas” as a
career. Theresa Senft (2008) defines microcelebrity as “a
new style of online performance that involves people ‘amp-
ing up’ their popularity over the Web using technologies like
video, blogs and social networking sites” (p. 25). Unlike
mainstream entertainment industry celebrities, who can
become public icons with large-scale followings, microce-
lebrity “is a state of being famous to a niche group of people”
(Marwick, 2013, p. 114) and involves the curation of a per-
sona that feels authentic to readers.
In Singapore, social media microcelebrities began as
commercial lifestyle bloggers on Internet platforms includ-
ing LiveJournal, Blogger, and WordPress. As “lifestyle”
bloggers, their blog posts are premised on the everyday, ordi-
nary, and mundane recounts of their lives “as lived.”
Commercial lifestyle bloggers are generally young women
between the ages of 18 and 35 years, among whom Influencer
labor and commerce is a self-taught endeavor (Abidin,
2015b). Followers are generally 70% female and 30% male
between the ages of 15 and 35 years (Abidin, 2015b). Since
their debut, these commercial lifestyle bloggers have since
diversified into several social media platforms (i.e.,
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, AskFM, Formspring,
YouTube, Snapchat). At the time of writing, Instagram is the
most proliferate and viable social medium for selfie adverto-
rials and thus the primary source for the following case stud-
ies (Abidin, 2014).
Commercial lifestyle bloggers quickly garnered main-
stream popularity in the larger collective imaginary, assisted
by several high-profile mainstream news reports on these
young women as savvy entrepreneurs, highlighting their
earning power and impact among young Internet users. @
melisapro (presently @melissackoh) and @naomineo_ are
two of the many microcelebrities who frequently appear in
the mainstream news. In particular, @melisapro was fea-
tured for her unconventional decision to leave her job in the
banking industry to pursue her social media advertorials
fulltime (Figure 2), while @naomineo_ was featured for
earning up to SGD45,000 a year despite being only 18 years
old (Figure 3).
Having attained multimedia microcelebrity in both digital
and print media and both digital and physical endeavors
(Abidin, 2015a, 2015b), they became known as Influencers—
everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a rela-
tively large following on blogs and social media through the
textual and visual narration of their personal lives and life-
styles, engage with their following in “digital” and “physi-
cal” spaces, and monetize their following by integrating
“advertorials” into their blogs or social media posts and mak-
ing physical paid-guest appearances at events. A portman-
teau term combining “advertisement” and “editorial,”
advertorials in the Influencer industry are highly personal-
ized, opinion-laden promotions of products/services that
Influencers appear to personally experience and endorse for
a fee (Abidin, 2015a). A majority of Influencers in Singapore
are contracted to management agencies, such as Nuffnang,
established in 2007 (Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards
[NAPBAS], 2009), and Gushcloud, established in 2011
(“Something Exciting Is Brewing,” 2013), whose managers
broker their collaborations and endorsements in exchange
for a commission. Managers are in turn responsible for
ensuring Influencers deliver timely work to clients under the
stipulated requirements and that Influencers are fairly com-
pensated for their work.
Selfies are central to the work that Influencers do.
Focusing on populist understandings, Oxford Dictionaries
define selfies as “[a] photograph that one has taken of one-
self, taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a
social media website” (“Selfie,” 2015). As scholars who
have spearheaded academic research on selfies, Senft and
Baym (2015) contextualize and expand the definition of self-
ies as a “cultural artifact” or “object” and “social practice” or
“gesture” (pp. 1588-1589). Most notably circulated on social
media, selfies as objects transmit “human feeling in the form
of a relationship,” and selfies as gestures send “different
messages to different individuals, communities, and audi-
ences” (pp. 1588-1589). Among Influencers in Singapore,
selfies are creatively appropriated as a platform to feature
products and services in advertorials and are also a medium
through which phatic communion (Malinowski, 1923;
Miller, 2008), a ritual strategy for fostering interpersonal
relationships through the medium of small talk, is expressed
between Influencers and their followers.
Additionally, selfies are affective and authenticating
“visual artifacts” through which followers can claim witness
when they meet with Influencers in the flesh. The follower/
influencer selfie functions discursively as evidence of the
“being there” at exclusive events and having interacted in
physical proximity (Koliska & Roberts, 2015); after all, a
distinctive feature of Influencers in Singapore is their exten-
sive integration of face-to-face meet-ups with followers on a
regular basis in formal and informal settings, in which selfie-
taking is a key event, mediated through “mobile witnessing”
on smartphones that “capture, circulate, and engage with
data [such as selfies] on the move” (Reading in Koliska &

4 Social Media + Society
Roberts, 2015, p. 1647). Influencers regularly meet with fol-
lowers at formal and informal events to sustain and amplify
their shared sense of intimacy through practices such as
selfie-taking (see Abidin, 2015a).
Good selfie-taking skills comprise the ability to capture a
well-framed digital self-portrait and the ability to edit the
selfie to maximize “likeability”—using the number of
“Likes” on a post as a way to quantify its popularity, and thus
the potential to monetize audience reception through this
measure of attention on-screen. In fact, good selfie-taking
skills are such a prized asset that Influencers have been rec-
ognized for their craft through an expanding base of follow-
ers and an increasing number of sponsorship and advertorial
engagements in the form of “product placement” selfies.
Although selfie-takers are mostly non-professional photog-
raphers (Koliska & Roberts, 2015), as microcelebrities for
whom (self-taught) selfie-taking is tied to their income,
Influencers have emerged as a genre of (semi-)professional
selfie-takers. One of Singapore’s pioneer Influencers, @
xiaxue, was even invited to give a live demonstration of her
“expert” selfie-editing skills on national television (Figure 4).
In response to populist discourses that dismiss selfies as a
narcissistic epidemic (Burns, 2015), the program adopted a
tone that celebrated the (technological) savvy of Influencers
like @xiaxue. Thus, within the sphere of Influencer com-
merce, the “assumed association [of selfies] with feminine
vanity and triviality” (Burns, 2015, p. 1718) does not devalue
the practice of selfie-taking, unlike the critiques of selfies
and selfie-takers in the (selective) corpus of memes (i.e.,
photographs, videos, cartoons) studied by Burns (2015):
Instead, these selfies are rewarded in a system that pegs a
price tag to the number of “likes” a selfie is able to garner,
and in this game, vanity selfies are unabashedly admired for
their aesthetic ideals and commercial value.
So, normative and viable are commercial selfies that the
prestige of good selfie-taking skills extends across genders.
Selfies have been argued to be a gendered object and practice
in which “negative feminine stereotypes” are perpetuated to
“legitimize the discipline of women’s behaviours and identi-
ties” (Burns, 2015, p. 1716) anchored on moral panics over
the safety and wellbeing of women (Dobson & Coffey,
2015). However, in Singapore, dozens of male Influencers
(successfully) partake in commercial selfies as a normative
practice in the industry. @yutakis is one of several dozen
male Influencers whose commercial selfies are very well-
received by his growing following—followers’ comments on
Figure 2 & 3. @melisapro & @naomineo_, screengrabbed, September 2015.

Abidin 5
Instagram reveal fawning over his appearance (“So handso-
meeee”; “Omg you’re so pretty”), specifically focusing on
particular facial features (“That flawless eyebrows”; “Look
at that jawline!”), and his ability to photograph, edit, and pro-
duce good selfies in the aesthetic of Japanese anime (“wow
legit anime”; “It’s like anime has come to life!!”). In other
words, like @xiaxue’s public sharing of her selfie-editing
prowess, Influencers are not chided for “photoshopping” and
producing “inauthentic” selfies (see Lobinger & Brantner,
2015), but are instead celebrated for their ability to produce
and curate good selfies.
Additionally, despite engaging in a practice thought to be
predominantly feminine (while occasionally criticized for
his vanity), @yutakis does not seem to have lost his hetero
sex appeal with numerous female followers who highlight
his desirability (“Omg u look so hot”; “I think the girl that u
choose for ur future, is really a lucky girl”). Capitalizing on
his “expert” selfie-taking skills, @yutakis has also been pro-
ducing photobooks of his selfies and self-timed photographs
for sale since 2013 (predating Kim Kardashian’s 2015 selfie
photobook, Selfish), which feature various location, apparel,
and printing sponsors as a creative form of advertorial
(Figure 5).
Evidently, commercial selfies are objects over which
Influencers labor and commodify, but what goes on behind-
the-scenes? Turning to the backstage work (Goffman, 1956)
involved in producing selfies with high commercial value,
this article situates selfies as latent commodities. Having con-
textualized the work selfies do for Influencers, the article now
turns to situating the use of Instagram among Influencers in
Singapore. In the next two sections, I demonstrate how selfies
are presented on Instagram and offer a repository of how self-
ies become salable objects. The last two sections focus on the
tacit labor behind selfie production and the mobilization of
selfies to negotiate contrived authenticity and reflexivity. The
final section contemplates selfies as a form of subversive fri-
volity through a culmination of the above practices.
Selfies on Instagram
Among Influencers, Selfies are most prolific on Instagram
and mediated via smartphones. Young people are increasingly
Figure 4. @xiaxue, screengrabbed, September 2015.
Figure 5. @yutakis, screengrabbed, September 2015.

6 Social Media + Society
reliant on smartphones for leisurely connecting to the Internet
(Galambos & Abrahamson, 2002), while desktop and laptop
usage has dropped and become limited to the more formal
spheres of school and work life. Some research indicates an
87% smartphone penetration (Media Research Asia, 2013)
and 123% mobile Internet penetration (Singh, 2014) in
Singapore. In 2013, Instagram was reported to be the “fastest
growing media application among mobile-savvy users” (Aw
Yeong, 2013) and has been used extensively by Influencers to
curate taste displays, publish advertorials, and wrestle for fol-
lowers (Abidin, 2014).
Although an ecology of selfie work across different plat-
forms is beyond the scope of this article, Influencers in
Singapore tend to curate a range of slightly different types of
selfies on Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. Instagram pri-
marily features the most professional and stylized selfies
with thoughtful captions and only on the rare occasions
included “behind-the-scenes” selfies (Figure 6) with deliber-
ately reflexive captions, suggesting what I will elaborate on
later as a contrived authenticity.
Twitter was for selfies “not making the Instagram cut,” as
@naomineo_ tells me that Twitter is “less serious” in terms
of photography aesthetic and that she feels “less pressure” to
post “only perfect” images there. @rchlwngx (Figure 7) and
@euniceannabel (Figure 8) similarly post more candid self-
ies to Twitter throughout the day, reserving Instagram for
only the most pristine selfies.
In a similar vein, Snapchat was a space in which Influencers
could deliberately curate and post what they describe as “fun
selfies,” “ugly selfies,” or “more authentic selfies” in which
they were photographed or videoed goofing around “behind-
the-scenes” “without long-term consequences” (Katz &
Crocker, 2015, p. 1862) given the platform’s ephemerality. As
a result of these different uses of various social media,
Instagram has emerged as a repository for the most stylized
and overtly commercial selfies in Singapore (Abidin, 2014).
This tendency is echoed in Marwick’s (2015) work on
Figure 6. @euniceannabel, screengrabbed, September 2015.
Figure 7 & 8. @rchlwngx & @EuniceAnnabel, screengrabbed, September 2015.

Abidin 7
“Instafame” where she notes Instagram for its “convergence
of cultural forces” including “a mania for digital documenta-
tion, the proliferation of celebrity and microcelebrity culture,
and conspicuous consumption” (p. 139).
Since its launch in 2010, Instagram has become an aes-
thetically stylized site for photo sharing, microblogging, net-
working, and commercial exchange. Instagram’s philosophy
is listed on its FAQ (2013) page:
What is Instagram? Instagram is a fun and quirky way to share
your life with friends through a series of pictures. Snap a photo
with your mobile phone, then choose a filter to transform the
image into a memory to keep around forever. We’re building
Instagram to allow you to experience moments in your friends’
lives through pictures as they happen. We imagine a world more
connected through photos.
However, four of the platform’s suggested uses have
been repurposed by Influencers and their use of commercial
selfies. First, Instagram presupposes a networked intimacy
in its adoption of the term “friends” to refer to one’s follow-
ers and following. However, Influencers usually have high
follower-to-following ratios, that is, having a large number
of (unknown) users subscribed to their account, while them-
selves subscribing to only a small number of (known) users.
Second, Instagram was intended to be a fuss-free “mobile
phone” app that could be used on the go with a smartphone
camera. However, Influencers are known to use high-end
digital cameras to capture high-resolution photographs
before transferring them to their smartphones for posting so
that the quality of the photograph is significantly improved.
Third, Instagram was crafted as a collection of “moments”
as a memory keepsake. However, Influencers are using the
stream to disseminate and circulate information and imag-
ery rather than as a personal nostalgic archive. Finally,
Instagram aims to capture life events spontaneously, “as
they happen.” However, Influencers are laboring over
purposefully staged images to portray a particular persona
and lifestyle aesthetic.
Selfies as Salable Objects
As noted earlier, selfies commonly take the form of adver-
torials on Instagram. Advertorials are thought to be more
effective than dispassionate, clinical advertisements since
they take the form of a personal narrative and incorporate
Influencers’ perspectives of having experienced the product
or service first-hand (Abidin, 2013). Based on my fieldwork
with Influencer management firms, I learned that Instagram
advertorials may be sold as a single slot, as a series of slots
situated within a strict time frame, or as part of an integrated
campaign involving other social media platforms. Although
pricelists are kept confidential within management agencies,
some Influencers may broker selected advertorial slots to the
public. One Influencer tells me that her going rate for a “pack-
age” of one blog post, one Instagram post, and one Tweet is
SGD1500, although this is hardly standardized given that
advertorial rates fluctuate depending on the popularity of the
Influencer as measured by their follower count, the type of
product featured, and the nature of the campaign.
In the following example, @xiaxue is seen advertising her
Instagram slots on Instagram, no less, in which one Instagram
advertorial published to “262,000 followers” on Instagram
and cross-posted to “161k followers” on Twitter was being
sold at a discounted price of SGD600 to blogshop (a particu-
lar genre of Singaporean online stores) owners only. The 15
comments in response to @xiaxue’s caption unanimously
express surprise at the unusually low rate at which her “spe-
cial promotional price” was commanding (Figure 9).
The most straightforward selfie advertorials are when
Influencers publish overt advertising content, prominently
displaying the featured product in a selfie accompanied by
information from the company. In the following example,
Figure 9. @xiaxue, screengrabbed, September 2015.

8 Social Media + Society
@rchlwngx is seen promoting jewelry store @theredbow-
tique’s necklace (Figure 10). In her caption, she tells follow-
ers that they are entitled to “5% off” should they follow @
theredbowtique’s Instagram account and “quote [her] name”
during the transaction.
However, certain products and services require more
work on the part of the Influencer in order to be embedded
into selfies, as observed in the case of @yankaykay’s
Instagram post (Figure 11). On first glance, the focal point in
the selfie seems to be the crucifix pendent she is lightly hold-
ing between her lips. On the bottom left corner is a second
focal point—a small image of a red, orange, and white logo,
juxtaposed against her jet-black tank top and hair and the
dark gray backdrop. It is ambiguous whether the logo on her
right chest is a sticker on her tank top or a superimposed
image photoshopped in after the selfie was taken, or whether
it was even meant to be a focal point in the selfie. Only on
reading the caption can one ascertain that @yankaykay is
advertising for the television entertainment channel, “cHK,”
on behalf of her client, media operator “mioTV.” The “-sp”
on which her caption ends is an abbreviation for “sponsored
post.” Although her selfie and advertorial caption appear
incongruent on closer inspection, in general @yankaykay
seems to have managed to incorporate the client’s logo into
her selfie in a manner so subtle that followers’ attention is
still focused on her selfie, such that her advertorial does not
come off as being too much of a “hard sell.”
The most labored and convincing commercial selfies
occur when Influencers are photographed actually using the
product or service, especially if it is in the aesthetic of a “how
to” tutorial, such as in the case of @ongxavier. Within the
span of a week, @ongxavier uploaded two Instagram images
of himself with a facial wash product. In the first image, his
face is off-focus in the background, clasped between his
Figure 10. @rchlwngx, screengrabbed, September 2015.
Figure 11. @yankaykay, screengrabbed, September 2015.

Abidin 9
palms as if washing his face. In the foreground are two bot-
tles of facial wash in focus (Figure 12). The second image is
a collage of four separate images, each showing @ongxavier
in the various stages of washing his face (Figure 13): an
image of the bottle of facial wash, a close-up of a squirt of
the wash in his palm, his hand spreading the wash all over his
foam-clad face, and a fresh face with damp fringe staring at
the bottle of facial wash.
At times, several Influencers may be collectively engaged in
what I term a “multi-Influencer campaign,” wherein a select
group of Influencers from an Influencer management agency
are tasked to promote a brand or product on their individual
Instagram streams within a designated period of time. Nuffnang
Influencers @sophiewillocq and @bongqiuqiu are seen here
advertising for a company, @covermybagel. In the same week,
both Influencers post a group selfie of the both of them and a
third male Influencer, @yutakis, although the photos are two
different versions with slightly altered poses (Figures 14 and
15). The selfies show the Influencers using the exact same car-
toon phone casing, which is clearly the focus of the selfie. A
few days later, @bongqiuqiu’s Instagram image was reposted
on the company @covermybagel’s Instagram account (Figure
16), with an altered caption, followed by an additional selfie of
the Influencer featuring the product again (Figure 17).
There are two advantages to this approach. First, each
Influencer is given some freedom to design and personalize
their Instagram ads in the aesthetic that would most appeal to
their followers—@sophiewillocq and @bongqiuqiu use dif-
ferent filters and captions on the same selfie, and @
sophiewillocq personalizes the selfie with the use of digital
stickers. The second advantage is that the advertorial cam-
paign is likely to remain in the imaginary of Instagram fol-
lowers for a longer period of time—since followers of
Influencers are likely to follow those within the same genre,
social group, or clique, these Instagram ads have the propen-
sity to show up on followers’ feeds prominently and repeat-
edly over the designated campaign period, unlike one-off
advertorials. This strategy is also known in the industry as a
“campaign blast.”
In another example, Influencers do not themselves post
commercial selfies, but encourage followers to take and post
selfies as part of their advertorial campaign. In two Instagram
posts published 1 day apart for the selfie competition
“#SunsilkCrazySnaps” organized by haircare company @
SunsilkSG, @naomineo_ invites followers to “tag a crazy
fun selfie or wefie” (Figure 18) for a chance to win an auto-
graphed GoPro. Her second post, although not a selfie, shows
@naomineo_ scrolling through the “#SunsilkCrazySnaps”
Figure 12 & 13. @ongxavier, screengrabbed, September 2015.

10 Social Media + Society
hashtag on Instagram, during which she is presumably
“shortlisting 12 babes who will receive Sunsilk hampers and
a personal note” (Figure 19).
The selfies produced by followers in such selfie competi-
tions serve to increase publicity for the campaign and are fre-
quently appropriated by clients for promotional material. As
such, although most followers (apart from the select few prize
winners) are not compensated for their creative labor, their self-
ies are commercial entities that are exploited by clients who
derive monetary value from their circulation and exposure.
Selfies as Tacit Labor
Much of the labor in which Influencers engage to produce
selfies are under-visibilized, despite being systematic and
effortful. Drawing from Polanyi’s (1958) notion of “tacit
knowledge,” I define their production and curation of selfies
as a form of tacit labor: a collective practice of work that is
understated and under-visibilized from being so thoroughly
rehearsed that it appears as effortless and subconscious.
Throughout fieldwork, I accompanied Influencers and their
managers to several “meet the Influencer” events, in which
selfie-taking was the highlight. The Influencers, ever oblig-
ing in the presence of followers, seem to have mastered the
practice of displaying their “camera-ready” selfie face: head
slightly tilted down to emphasize one’s chin and elongate the
face—what Marwick (2015) calls the “MySpace angle” (p.
141)—but is colloquially known as “娃娃头” or “wáwá tóu”
which literally translates as “doll head”; eyebrows slightly
raised and eyelids lifted to give the illusion of larger, rounder
eyes; pursed lips and a tightening of the cheek muscles to
accentuate one’s cheekbones; shoulders slightly raised so
that one’s collarbones are given more prominence. “Mirror
selfies” require additional labor: tummies sucked in with a
hand pinched to one side of the waist to highlight a slim but
hour-glass figure; one foot shifted slightly to the front with
Figure 14, 15, 16 & 17. @sophieqillocq, @bongqiuqiu, @covermybagel, screengrabbed September 2015.
Figure 18. @naomineo_, screengrabbed, September 2015.

Abidin 11
heels off the floor and a slight tiptoe, so the body leads for-
ward to lengthen one’s frame. All this intricate transitory
bodily emotion work—when we “change somatic or other
physical symptoms of emotion” (Hochschild, 2003, p. 96) in
order to alter our feelings—occurred swiftly and quietly
within a matter of seconds and would have gone unnoticed
by the untrained eye. Intrigued, I began documenting the
tacit labor involved in Influencers’ selfie production through
the instruments of makeup and dressing, lighting and postur-
ing, and apps and artifice.
Makeup and Dressing
While accompanying Influencers on photo shoots, I was pres-
ent for their makeup regime behind-the-scenes. They told me
of the need to practice “contouring” with two different shades
of foundation on their faces, where a liquid version of the
cosmetic is preferred to the powered version, as it enables
Influencers to “blend” lighter and darker patches on their
face. Done correctly, this “basic makeup technique” can give
the illusion of fuller foreheads, higher nose bridges, rounder
cheeks, and sharper chins, to name a few effects. All this was
described to me as intended to give the illusion of “cuteness”
as a strategy to solicit favor, affect, and desire among follow-
ers and possible male partners (Abidin, in press).
Most Influencers also had two or three sets of cosmetic
products for different occasions. Most had a basic makeup
kit for more “natural” and “neutral” tones that they wear on
a daily basis. The second kit comprised more cosmetic items
for a fuller face of makeup that they used when attending
events to meet with followers, clients, and fellow Influencers.
The third kit usually contained the highest number of cos-
metic items for a more dramatically made-up face and was
only used when Influencers were going for professional
photo shoots under “harsh studio lighting,” or when “profes-
sional high-resolution cameras” would pick up even the
smallest of details on their faces. While my informants only
occasionally mentioned the prices of individual products, I
estimate that each kit may cost between SGD100 and
SGD300 (USD70–USD210), depending on the brands used.
This is especially crucial because while Influencers are
often able to make digital edits to their photographs and
selfies to omit blemishes before posting them on social
media, professional studio shoots are largely curated by in-
house magazine or client photographers who are very
unlikely to accede to such requests. Instead, any minor
tweaks to these photographs are completely at the discretion
of the client.
Taking eye makeup as an example, Influencer Ellen once
gave me a sneak peek into her makeup kit and demonstrated
the three levels of makeup intensity she would use: on nor-
mal days, she usually only relied on double eyelid tape—a
thin translucent double-sided sticky tape that creased the
folds of eyelids to give the impression of double eyelids—
and eyeliner—a dark pencil that is used to outline one’s eyes
for more definition. If she were attending events, she would
apply “falsies” or false eyelashes, which were synthetic eye-
lashes that one could stick on. On days where she had photo
shoots in professional studios, Ellen would consider dou-
bling up on her falsies, using a darker eyeliner that she would
draw on more thickly, and perhaps also use iris-enlarging
contact lenses to give the impression of larger eyes.
In terms of dressing, I learned that heels were often the
most important apparel item for “mirror selfies.” Many
Influencers would bring along extra pairs of heels of different
heights in their cars, or if they were at events with dressing
Figure 19. @naomineo_, screengrabbed, September 2015.

12 Social Media + Society
rooms, in their dressing bag. They explained how heels gave
the illusion of longer, slimmer legs, and how heels that were
thinner like stilettos, as opposed to wedges which were
chunky heels, also drew the illusion of having more defined
calf muscles. Influencers who knew their “body shape” and
“proportions” well enough often had a favorite way of dress-
ing. Yvette, who is often complimented for her protruding
collarbones and defined shoulder blades, is fond of wearing
off-shoulder tops to flaunt her slender frame, while Marianne,
who sports washboard abs is often spotted in crop tops and
low-waist pants to accentuate her muscles. Playing with fab-
rics, colors, and patterns, Brittany tells me that striped pants
help to elongate her frame, Irene tells me that pastel colors
help her skin to appear more milky and fair in photographs,
and Angela explains that “flowy” materials like polyester-silk
blends and chiffon fall off her chest and hips nicely to give the
impression that she has a more shapely, feminine figure.
I often expressed doubt about such strategies and would
mention that such “dressing tips” were simply regurgitations
from women’s magazines. However, many Influencers
assured me that while they used to share my mindset, seeing
someone with the naked eye and gazing at them through a
selfie were two distinct practices, and that these were skills
and “tricks” they had learned from trial-and-error and emu-
lating fellow Influencers. Jacqueline once mentioned that the
makeup and dressing tips that Influencers talked about were
simply “tips to trick the camera into making you look better
than you really are.” Similarly, Jamie insisted that while we
“probably see no difference” in the flesh, these “beauty illu-
sions” would be much more prominent when photographed
in selfies.
Lighting and Posturing
Good “background lighting” for selfie-taking was also a key
consideration. While natural morning sunlight, around
9 a.m.–11 a.m. outdoors, was the most preferred background
lighting, in indoor situations Influencers tended to prefer
white lights to warmer, orange hues, since the former tended
to “cast better shadows” and reflect the “true color” of their
makeup and outfits more accurately. In the privacy of their
own homes and offices, many Influencers owned profes-
sional “ring lights.” These were doughnut-shaped white
bulbs that came with a portable stand that Influencers would
place on the camera lens when taking selfies or self-timed
shots. They enabled Influencers to take brighter, clearer,
high-resolution photographs in the comfort of their houses,
and the “even” lighting did not cast unsightly shadows on
their faces and bodies, as regular lighting would. This smooth
lighting made it easier for Influencers to edit out blemishes
or smoothen their skin tones with photo-editing apps, which
I will discuss in the next segment.
For months, I watched Influencers take selfies with each
other. As I was approaching the end of fieldwork and began
winding down activities with these Influencers, I approached
several of them for memento selfies to commemorate our
time together. It was in this process that I learned, by chance,
that posing in group photos is in itself a complex craft. On
many occasions, not only did Influencers occupy their “pre-
ferred side” (i.e., “I look better from this angle”; “my dimple
is here”; “need to see my [side-swept] fringe; if not, my fore-
head will look very big”), but they also tended to gently hold
my shoulder and nudge me closer to the camera, such that
their faces would appear smaller in comparison. In these
examples, Influencers’ bodies are framed as “beauty prob-
lems” that fester insecurities—bodies become “partial” in
that they are “fragmented” for the pursuit of perfection and
“situational” (Driscoll, 2002, p. 247) in that those individual
bodies can be disciplined into proper posturing through self-
improvement and consumption.
Influencers who wanted to accentuate their smaller
frame—relative to mine—also angled their bodies to the side
to occupy less of the photographic frame. As if second
nature to their job, almost every Influencer I encountered
was fond of taking multiple shots of the same scene or selfie,
at times with only very small changes in their facial expres-
sions on body angles. They would then pick the photograph
in which they looked the most photogenic for their social
media feeds. I also learned that when group shots or selfies
were taken, it was basic etiquette for each Influencer to view
a preview of the image on the camera or phone screen, often
zooming in and enlarging their faces and bodies to “approve”
of the photo. It was common practice for Influencers to
request that “unglamorous” or badly taken photographs be
deleted off each other’s cameras. It was also not unusual for
each Influencer to snap the photograph or selfie with their
own devices, despite the group being in the same stances and
postures, as every Influencer had her own preferred way of
editing and processing the image before publishing on her
own social media feed.
Apps and Artifice
Using image-enhancing and photo-editing applications to
tweak one’s photographs is a widely acceptable practice in
the Instagram Influencer industry, as evidenced in
Influencer @xiaxue’s live demonstration (Figure 4). There
are a few common practices among Influencers who use
smartphone apps to enhance their images, such as editing
away blemishes and moles, whitening their complexion,
widening their eyes, elongating their faces, sharpening their
noses, smoothing creases and wrinkles, and lengthening
one’s frame. In this sense, looking at one’s “edited self”
constitutes the practice of “gazing,” wherein Influencers
constitute their own ego through relating to the image of
themselves being watched (Mulvey, 1999, p. 837). In her
studies of cinema, Laura Mulvey (1999) develops the
notion of “the gaze” based on the practice of “scopophilia”

Abidin 13
in which “looking itself is a source of pleasure” (p. 835). In
response to these usual practices, many photo-editing apps
now come with in-built options that will automatically edit
specific parts of a photo at the click of a button. At present,
the most popular of these apps is “Meitu Xiuxiu,” which is
fuss-free and easy to negotiate, although users will require
a basic command of Mandarin, as it is the app’s default set-
ting. On personal computers, Influencers prefer Adobe
Photoshop editing software, especially since it allows users
to store their preferred settings and apply edits to multiple
photos at once.
Selfies for Contrived Authenticity and
Reflexivity
Apart from the stylized and effortful selfies for sale, some
Influencers also publish equally, if not more thoughtful,
“behind-the-scenes” selfies in a display of contrived authen-
ticity and reflexivity. Frosh (2015) notes that selfies are a
“genre of personal reflexivity,” in which they “show a self,
enacting itself . . . fluctuating between the self as an image
and as a body, as a constructed effect of representation and as
an object and agent of representation” (p. 1621). One enact-
ment of this is @rchlwngx’s reflexive selfies in response to
accusations that she was using chin implants—@rchlwngx
posted a selfie of herself frowning on Twitter (Figure 20),
with a caption directing followers’ attention to her “wrinkly
chin” as evidence that she had not had implants inserted.
While her caption—“If only [there] was an implant in there
so it wouldn’t wrinkle”—may come off as a playful rant to
most followers, those with contextual knowledge are able to
read into @rchlwngx’s caption that serves to playfully dispel
plastic surgery rumors.
In a second Tweet (Figure 21), @rchlwngx juxtaposes
two selfies taken some years apart, before and after she had
become a popular Influencer. The older selfie on the left was
circulating online in the rhetoric of exposé, amid accusations
from Internet users that the Influencer had secretly engaged
in cosmetic surgery; these Internet users noted that the
Influencer’s facial appearance had undergone drastic changes
over the years. In this vein, Senft and Baym (2015) note the
potential for selfies to be embedded in the “infrastructure of
the digital superpublic” (p. 1589) in which the original con-
text of the selfie’s production, viewing, and circulation is
subject to change and mutation.
In another measure of publicity savvy, @rchlwngx uses
selfies reactively by passively denying these “plastic sur-
gery” rumors—the Influencer reposted the “leaked” selfie on
her Twitter account and compared it against a newer selfie.
In this act, she seems to appropriate the narrative generated
in the so-called exposé by reorienting followers to a sense of
positive self-improvement; her caption reads “check out
what [these have] done for me!” She also tells followers that
her facial changes are a result of “puberty/braces/accutane/
DRx/Botox/fillers,” thus publicly reaffirming her belief (i.e.,
selling) in at least one of her sponsors, “DRx,” who provides
beauty enhancement services and has been featured on @
rchlwngx’s blog. Additionally, similar to the earlier example,
followers without knowledge of the context are unlikely to
read into @rchlwngx’s perceptive management of damaging
rumors, especially since her “compare and contrast” selfies
can come across as simply another advertorial. Thus,
Influencers also use selfies in a defensive manner as “a form
of digital storytelling” (Koliska & Roberts, 2015, p. 1676)
defined as having a voiceover, in which the narratives are
subtly layered: followers who lack the context in which these
playful selfies are situated may perceive these posts as frivo-
lous, while those who are “in the know” are able to read into
the implicit messages Influencers subtly embed into their
subversive selfies.
In other instances, Influencers may unintentionally inspire
reflexivity among their followers, as evident in the example
of @xiaxue’s SkinnyMint advertorial (Figure 22). In this
product placement commercial selfie, @xiaxue has collaged
Figure 20 & 21. @rchlwngx, screengrabbed, September 2015.

14 Social Media + Society
two photographs into one—on the left is a selfie in which the
Influencer is seen holding an owl mug to her face with a pink
SkinnyMint tea label dangling out, while the photo on the
right displays the same owl mug in the foreground with fea-
tured bag of tea “SkinnyMint 28 DAY TEATOX” in the back-
ground. The first time @xiaxue published the selfie, the
caption began with instructions from her manager—“Hello
Wendy! Here’s your EDITED caption for skinny mint 2nd
IG”—that the Influencer most likely forgot to omit. The first
few Instagram followers who viewed this selfie immediately
spotted this faux pas—“did you mean to put that first line
omg”; “Did you mean to put ‘hey wendy’”—and called the
Influencer out for her work ethic—“don’t just copy and
paste leh”; “BUSTED.” Another early viewer expressed their
unawareness of the extent of crafting and curating that every
commercial selfie entails—“She has an editor?”—sparking
off a series of similar comments from various followers who
were, through this incident, alerted to the backend manage-
ment behind commercial selfies. Although @xiaxue promptly
deleted this selfie within a matter of minutes (Figure 22) and
replaced it with one that edited out the instructions from her
manager (Figure 23), many followers made light of her mis-
take with gloating comments—“I saw what you did :P”;
“hahahahahaha xD”; “That was too funny.”
Where @xiaxue’s break in frame (Goffman, 1974) has
instigated reflexivity among some followers, @yankaykay’s
use of non-sponsored selfies in the aesthetic of commercial
selfies (Figure 24) reveals her personal reflexivity in relation
to the latent commerce in selfie production. In this example,
@yankaykay snaps a selfie while holding a cup of Jolly Bee
dessert to her face. Her caption begins in the aesthetic of a
standard commercial selfie, introducing the product, its price
tag, instructions for customer orders, and a short endorse-
ment prompt. However, the second paragraph of her caption
goes on to inform readers that while this post reads off as a
sponsored selfie at first glance, it is actually a non-paid, per-
sonal testimonial from the Influencer—“I’m trained as a
model/blogger to pose/post for ads and I know what this
looks like but this isn’t an ad.” She goes on to explain that the
client/owner is a personal friend of hers and that her “entire
Figure 22. @xiaxue, screengrabbed, September 2015.

Abidin 15
house adores” the product, which she has been consuming
“with every meal since [her] first order.” @yankaykay’s can-
did display seems to add a layer of authenticity to her
“performance”—a personal testimonial in the guise of a
commercial selfie—since she has forgone the high adverto-
rial fee, she would have otherwise been able to command
given that she has over 86,900 followers on Instagram.
Conclusion: Selfies as Subversive Frivolity
As selfie-takers, female Influencers have been renarrativiz-
ing the moral panic surrounding selfies to such a successful
extent that good selfies and selfie-taking skills are a prized
asset in the Influencer industry. Some male Influencers have
also subverted gendered stereotypes and effectively claimed
the practice of commercial selfies without compromising
public receptions of their (hetero)sexuality. As a social
medium, Instagram has been creatively appropriated for
commercial rewards, primarily through the vehicle of selfies
that have been established as latent commodities that recast
selfies as (financially) valuable forms of property. As a
product for sale, advertorial selfies innovatively reframe
Influencers’ sense of charisma, given that the featured prod-
ucts draw from Influencers’ relatable personae and selfies to
acquire affective value through a “halo effect” (Nisbett &
Wilson, 1977). As a form of tacit labor, commercial selfies
redirect the pathological disciplinary gaze applied from
external viewers by appealing to followers and fellow
Influencers for whom in-group policing is a productive
power that contributes to the betterment of selfie-taking stan-
dards. As a space for contrived authenticity and reflexivity,
selfies serve Influencers as instruments with which to sub-
vert rumors, followers’ perceptions, and the increasing overt
commercialism of the Influencer industry.
In her study of young Australians’ selfies and sexts,
Albury (2015) notes that “[y]oung people’s accounts of cul-
tures of self-representation”—such as through the medium
and practice of selfies—“offer a productive space for
Figure 23. @xiaxue, screengrabbed, September 2015.
Figure 24. @yankaykay, screengrabbed, September 2015.

16 Social Media + Society
reshaping educational, legal, and policy conversations about
media, sexuality, and gender” (p. 1742), especially since they
allow us to consider the context of intended uses and ver-
nacular meaning-making. In a similar vein, Influencers’
(semi-)professional selfie products and practices offer new
ways of framing the selfie as a tool which has the potential to
insidiously undermine prevalent discourses.
If I were ever again to be asked “Aren’t these just young,
rich women doing vain things online?” I hope to have the
eloquence to express that it is exactly this casual dismissal of
selfies as mere frivolity that has enabled Influencers to par-
take in quietly subversive acts, by reappropriating the selfie
for self-branding, financial gains, and self-actualization pur-
suits. If being consistently under-visibilized and under-esti-
mated allows for the generative power of selfies to subvert
the affordances of Instagram, the expectations of female
entrepreneurs, the gaze of the camera, and representations of
authenticity, selfies, and their subversive frivolity may con-
tinue to thrive under the radar.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
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Author Biography
Crystal Abidin (PhD, The University of Western Australia) is a
researcher in Anthropology and Sociology, and Communication
and Media Studies at the University of Western Australia. Her
research interests include social media commerce, (self-)branding,
and (micro-)celebrity culture.